My main inspirations were from the photographs that I collected. Some of them were from websites, some were from books, but primarily it was from the photographs from the Children of the Manhattan Project website. I also went to the site in New Mexico. I went to Los Alamos and the museum in Albuquerque and watched a movie there about the Manhattan Project and bought several videos and CDs, as well as every book that was available. That was primarily the research. In terms of the colors, I collected a lot of materials that were at the site, like stones and minerals that I found. That’s where the color came from.

I started doing research after reading the libretto. Then I showed the research to the director. Peter and I have worked together so much that I actually ended up showing him primarily the finished product because we just know each other so well. After collaborating with the directors, I created the designs. I didn't paint them this time, partly because there wasn't enough time and partly because the palette is so small. I then met with the costume shop staff and started to break things down and make decisions as to what we will make and what we will buy. We went down to Los Angeles to shop for fabric and shopped a little around the Bay Area. Then, it's in the costume shop's hands, and I come in and look at what they are working on. We have an extremely short dress rehearsal period here, so the fittings are even more important because there is no time to fix things on stage.

Because they are based on what those real people wore, the costumes obviously reflect them completely because all the costumes are based on something I saw. The one person who is not like that is Kitty. And that's partly because she is basically the only woman besides Pasqualita and the female chorus. I wanted to get a sense of her vulnerability and her sexiness and womanhood, which Kitty had. She was very feminine and at the same time a mysterious person. Her costumes are based on what Peter and I talked about. That's really the only costume I designed. The rest I copied from reality.

It's based on what they actually wore. Oppenheimer always wore the suit because it separated him as an authority figure, so he wore it everywhere unless it was a personal weekend excursion. The younger people were more casual. Robert Wilson wore shorts or jeans. Some of the older men have a more European look. Because I am copying reality, the relationships are already there. Groves is a very interesting character because he wanted so much to have the army discipline, so he is always immaculate. I didn’t invent anything really – it was all there.

I think it's the color and the ghostliness, as well as the sense of the flash of the atomic bomb. I tried to get a little bit of that. I don't like to do things where the audience says, “Oh that's what that means!” I need to be mysterious. I don’t want it to be something that hits you over the head. But it's primarily the color palette and the sort of ghostliness. In Los Alamos, it’s almost like you feel the people are still there. There’s something very haunting about the feeling of the spirit of the people being there. That's what I was trying to do.